Hi Guys,
Picked this Spanish lunch ration for Muslim staff up the other day and thought I'd share.
Okay first up, the unopened ration:
- Unopened ration
Packaging is pretty sturdy but not up there with the strength of an MRE. It feel thinner. Best Before date is November 2014. Now for the contents:
- Opened ration
Everything neatly packed. The instruction booklet is in three languages, Spanish, English and French.
Shot of the English page:
- Instruction booklet
AS you can see, the main meals for this pack are 1 bag of chicken noodle soup, 1 tin of cooked chickpeas, 1 tin of squid in vegetable oil and a tube of quince cream. I'm still unsure of what to do with the quince jam (jelly) as they do not provide any crackers or biscuits to eat it with.
Everything laid out:
- Contents of the ration
Because there is no way I'm eating the squid, ever, I thought i'd give the chickpea's a go. Close up of the tin:
- Chickpeas
The tin itself had a best before date of November 2015 printed on it, however there were signs of rust on the lip of the tin.
- Rust on tin
Opened with fuel tablets just before heating.
- Pre heating
At this point I have to say this is the worst ration I've ever had in terms of user friendliness. By that I mean the matches are made of cardboard and break easily when trying to light them. The fuel tablets provided kept going out, even though there was no wind. This is what I ended up with:
- Spent fuel tablets
One fuel tablet was insufficient to heat the chickpeas (maybe they're meant to be eaten cold? I'm not a chickpea person, so who knows?), so I decided to light two at once. Those kept going out so I just eventually gave up and decided to taste the chickpeas which were just above lukewarm temperature.
- Chickpeas!!
The result? I took one spoonful and chucked the rest in the bin. They tasted like chickpeas in tomato flavoured water. I did not like this at all. As I said previously, I didn't bother with the squid but I might open it and take a pic just to see what it looks like.
So from what tasted here today, I think it must suck to be Muslim on patrol having to eat a lunch ration in the Spanish Army. Unless you really like squid and chickpeas. In which case it'll probably not suck so much.
